Image copyright Elaine ConstantineImage caption Bob Stanley (left), Sarah Cracknell and Peter Wiggs first came to prominence as the band St Etienne in the early 1990s

For fans of indie disco darlings Saint Etienne, Christmas isn’t quite Christmas without a seasonal single and a tour. This year, the band have released their Christmas compilation album A Glimpse of Stocking on vinyl for the first time and take to the road for four special shows.

But for all the apparent yuletide spirit, the trio say they have not always found it easy to feel festive.

“My dad used to make the carol singers come into the sitting room and sing properly,” admits singer Sarah Cracknell.

“He wouldn’t have it if they weren’t trying. I would also have to be there too, which was really mortifying.”

Songwriter and keyboardist Pete Wiggs still shudders over a spell working in a department store 1986, where the traditional Slade and Wizzard songs were played ad nauseam.

“I still really like Slade and Wizzard, but I didn’t that year,” he says. “At that point, I was really into gloomy indie.”

Bob Stanley, who writes songs and plays keyboards, could have a genuine grievance with 25 December – his birthday falls on that day.

But he insists he doesn’t mind. “I always thought it was awful that kids had to go to school on their birthday or as an adult going to work. That’s never been a problem for me,” he says.

Stanley’s birthday inspired the band’s 1993 song I Was Born On Christmas Day, a duet with The Charlatans’ Tim Burgess.

Cracknell, who “married” Burgess in the video, recalls: “We did the video at Kensington and Chelsea Registry Office and then the Cobden Working Men’s Club in Ladbroke Grove, west London.

“It was such a laugh. When I got married, we used the same venues – Kensington and Chelsea for the wedding and the Cobden for the reception. My husband was all right with that, he didn’t feel Tim had got there first.”

Image copyrightElaine ConstantineImage caption Saint Etienne say all the best pop bands have to make a Christmas song

Previous Saint Etienne Christmas shows have included DJ sets at working men’s clubs “of our best ever 100 songs”, an event in the reception of London’s Queen Elizabeth Hall with comedians Peter Serafinowicz and Robert Popper, and gigs at the London Palladium and Shepherds Bush Empire.

Wiggs’s recollections of other December gigs are hazy. “In the past, we have had Dale Winton handing out presents from a supermarket trolley,” he says. “That was in the ’90s.”

This year, the band are playing their traditional festive concerts are in Gateshead, Manchester, Wakefield and Croydon, the town where Wiggs and Stanley grew up.

“The Fairfield Halls [in Croydon] at that time of year has always been about pantos,” says Wiggs.

“There was never anyone playing that I wanted to see apart from Glenn Campbell and Don McLean. We thought, ‘Let’s do something in December and turn it into a party.'”

The 2015 concerts are, according to Stanley, “as close to Christmas as we could be without getting in the way of office parties.”

He continues: “We will have a couple of guest acts and we will have some stuff on sale that people can buy as presents for their friends.”

Cracknell laughs: “It is a bit of a ridiculous idea because you have more snowstorms at a time of year you’re trying to get around the country, it’s quite problematic. But it’s good fun as everyone is in the right mood. And the guest acts have been chosen by region, so they don’t have far to go home.”

As you would expect from a sometime music journalist and author of the history of British pop, (his book Yeah Yeah Yeah came out in 2013), Stanley is evangelistic about tinsel-tinged pop.

“We are all pop fans and all the best people make Christmas records. The Beatles did a flexi-disc for their fans every December. Both Elvis Christmas albums are great.”

He is also a fan of Leona Lewis’s single One More Sleep, has made plans to buy Kylie’s Christmas album on white vinyl “the first chance I get”. And he holds strong opinions on what makes a song at this time of year work.

“It’s got to be pro-Christmas. Fairytale of New York is a grinch record, I don’t understand the love for it at all. It’s got to be daft.

Image copyrightElaine ConstantineImage caption The band say they aren’t worried about chart success but just want to make good music

“Glam and Christmas went hand in hand. Elvis is made for Christmas. He had a great sense of humour and was very aware that he was in a ludicrous position but yet he was sincere, which is why he could do carols.”

These days, the end-of-year charts are more often than not topped by the X Factor winner.

But Stanley begs to differ: “I wouldn’t say he’s ruined Christmas but he’s missing a trick. I find it really baffling that he doesn’t have a Christmas song for the winner. At some point one in three would become a standard.

“Why pick Hallelujah or some of the other tracks he’s chosen? If he wants more advice on how to make money out the music industry, he only has to ask.”

If they’re unlikely to be posing a chart threat to this year’s X Factor winner, Saint Etienne are still delighted to be associated, like Slade and Wizzard, with this time of year.

“I don’t mind at all,” says Wiggs. “They’re successful bands. Our Christmas song is on a few compilations. Probably the people who work in shops hate it, and so I’d like to say, ‘Sorry, shop workers.'”

9 Ways To Earn Money Online Without InvestmentBusinessZone (blog)If you are interested in blogging then why not use the blog for making some money. You can post ads on your blog, and it will help you in getting some cash. There are sites that you can use to get some ads and put them on your site. It is important to …

(CNN)What to do when you’re a single mom with a one-year old and a lot of financial burden? Write a blog about being more savvy about money, of course, and then a book too.

Lagos-based Arese Ugwu, who blogs about finances at smartmoneyafrica.org, said she’s combined her love of the TV show “Sex and the City” with her business acumen from her days working in financial services to write entertaining but practical advice in her book called The Smart Money Woman.

After Ugwu’s marriage ended, she realized she wasn’t saving and investing enough. “So I’m thinking, if I work in financial services and I earn money and it’s hard to save, then what about others?” She noticed a massive gap in the educational financial market in Nigeria, and decided to write her book.

“It’s Sex and the City but in a very African context,” said Ugwu, whose book tells the story of five Nigerian women and how they go through their journey to financial freedom.

Your bank statement should reflect your values

When you look at your bank statement at the end of each month, what does it say about you? If you’re spending over half your income on going out to restaurants and shopping, maybe it’s time to sit back and rethink your priorities, suggests Ugwu.

“In Nigeria, we have a huge amount of people who look like they have a lot of money, but they have no financial cushion. They have no assets. They look like Kim Kardashian but they don’t have her assets.”

Rethink 2017

The new year is a particularly good time to rethink your financial situation.

Think now about how to make money in 2017, says Ugwu. After a tumultuous year for Nigeria’s economy, Ugwu says to look beyond borders. “I think Nigerians need to think about other income streams for next year, and ask ‘What is your vision for 2017?'”

Find ways to earn foreign currencies, for example, by tapping into the huge African market, suggests Ugwu. Selling your goods abroad can be lucrative. “Find other income streams that don’t rely on our currency.”

Just say no to spending

The simplest way to avoid debt is just to shun spending altogether, advises Ugwu.

Christmas, and all holidays, should be a time of sharing and spending time with family, advises Ugwu. “That doesn’t always mean you have to spend money,” says Ugwu.

Its true. Nothing shows your ignorant Facebook friends true colors better than a national (or international) tragedy. You go through this every time. An unarmed black teenager is shot, Facebook friend says he deserved it because he was probably a thug, unfriend. A public place full of innocent civilians is shot up and another Facebook friend wants to make statuses arguing how the gunman was misunderstood and doesnt deserve to be called a terrorist or a bad person, unfriend. #AllLivesMatter posts, nuff said, unfriend.

Ill admit, I havent had to go through the Facebook purge of friends who share different opinions (or who state completely false facts) because I did a serious purge of people from my small hometown in Indiana as soon as I dutty wined across my high school graduation stage (Im kidding, I cant dance, but I did do a serious Facebook purge).

But then I went to college and added an entirely new batch of people with views different from my own. While I have let a few go here and there, I always promised myself Id message them first and try to have an open and frank conversation about why they feel the way they feel before I just delete them passive aggressively. This is because a lot of the time, when you have a conversation one on one instead of attacking publicly, you get to root of a persons beliefs a lot faster than you would leaving snarky comments on their posts that you clearly disagree with. Ill admit, Ive let a few rude comments slip through the cracks, but for the most part, this new method of communicating with love (or at least respect) first has worked a lot better for me.

It wasnt until the Colorado Shooting at Planned Parenthood that I felt like there was so much ignorance on my Facebook newsfeed, that I had to do a purge. But, I took a few deep breathes, turned off Adeles new album (which may or may not have had something to do with the way I was feeling) and decided to create the list below instead.

From what Ive seen on social media, a lot of people who arent standing with Planned Parenthood are doing so for three reasons: 1) they consider themselves a Christian, 2) Planned Parenthood only performs abortions for mothers too lazy (seriously someone said that) to take care of their child to be and 3) because supporting Planned Parenthood means supporting that feminist bullshit. Got it.

So apparently because I do stand with Planned Parenthood I am not a Christian (false), Ive probably had an abortion (false) and as a feminist I spew feminist bullshit all day long (okay I talk about feminism A LOT, but none of it is bullshit to me).

Instead of messaging these slew of people one by one, I figured this would be more effective and possibly reach even more people. I want to start by saying that everyone is entitled to their opinion, no matter how much I agree or disagree with it. However, I also believe that there are few things worse than a completely uneducated opinion. So let me help some of you out:

1. The shooting in Colorado Springs is not the only act of violence Planned Parenthood workers and patrons have experienced. One woman shared her experiences of working at Planned Parenthood in Kansas and they are disturbing. While some choose to just write statuses on Facebook and share right wing articles or bible versus, others are taking their hate and lack of knowledge to a new level by attacking Planned Parenthood centers and harming innocent people.

2. Only three percent of Planned Parents services include abortions, however, it is unclear how much revenue abortions bring in for the clinics. I understand why those who do not stand with Planned Parenthood are upset by this statistic, but it is a fact. While we dont know how much revenue Planned Parenthood gets from abortions, we cant assume workers are walking up to pregnant women on the street urging them to get an abortion just to make money.

3. Being pro-choice does not mean pro-abortion. Pro-choice is the belief that it is the womans right, not the mans nor the governments, or the family’s, right to choose what happens to an unborn child. Pro-choice includes the right for a woman to put her baby up for adoption and also the right for her to change her mind on said adoption and keep the baby before it is born.

4. Lastly, just because your cousins boyfriends ex step mom had an abortion and regretted it does not mean that 1) every woman having an abortion will regret it and 2) that you even have the right to share that story with 1,000 of your ~closest~ Facebook friends. Its rude, none of their business and truly none of yours either.

So there you have it. To my Facebook friends and others out there who may disagree with every line of this, I just have one thing left to say to you: knowledge is power and reading is fundamental.

How to use OfferVault and Affiliate Marketing to Your AdvantageEdgy Labs (blog)Popular blogger and founder of ShoutMeLoud, Harsh Agrawal, publishes each month how much his blog makes. He reported earnings of $52,434 USD for the month of July 2017. Out of this amount, affiliate income brought in $39,787. This translates into 75% …